The Killing Tree - Softcover

Keener, Rachel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1599951118 ISBN 13: 9781599951119

Publisher: Center Street, 2009

Synopsis

It's the summer after Mercy Heron graduates from high school, and she's living in the household of her domineering grandfather and a grandmother whose behavior has always been erratic--some folks even call it crazy. They've raised Mercy since her mother died giving birth to her under the June apple tree, after Father Heron locked her out and ignored her pleas for help.
Mercy's days are spent working at the local diner, and hanging out with her wild best friend Della. Unlike Della, she's never seriously considered leaving the insulated community on Crooked Top mountain. Not until that summer when she meets Trout, a man who opens Mercy's eyes to a world beyond what she's known--both physically and emotionally. Their relationship must be kept secret, because Father Heron won't approve of his granddaughter being involved with a migrant worker. But when Mercy tries to escape, she'll learn just how powerful, and ruthless, her grandfather can be. And the truth of her past will threaten to forever bind her to the mountain.

About this title

About the Author:

Rachel Keener was born in the mountains of southwest Virginia in 1978. After graduating from Carson Newman College, she attended law school at Wake Forest University. She graduated in the top of her class at the age of twenty-three. Today, Rachel lives in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina with her husband and two sons. This is her first novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

An Appalachian coming-of-age novel detours through a migrant workers camp for an intensely lyrical, emotional debut. Raised on Crooked Top Mountain, Mercy Heron was raised by her grandparents, crazy Rutha and cold church deacon Father Heron, after her unwed mother died in childbirth. Mercy, 18 and working as a diner waitress, falls in love with Trout, a migrant fruit picker who shares Rutha's connection to mountain magic. Echoing her mother's actions, Mercy tries to escape Father Heron's disapproval and goes on the run with Trout, and she's quickly thrown into the tumultuous life of a migrant worker. Despite her fortitude, Mercy finds she cannot avoid Father Heron's influence, and she returns to Crooked Top for a dangerous confrontation. Keener's vivid imagery and lush, folksy language evoke traditions about nature and mountain people, reality and myth, piety and sin. Though occasionally overwrought, the novel succeeds in bringing to life a slice of mountain life where old and new, foreign and native, real and imagined, poetic and mundane blend against a harsh and beautiful landscape. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Center Street
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1599951118
• ISBN 13: 9781599951119
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 324